Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu Gets a New Visual Identity
buntcake writes "Canonical has launched a new visual identity for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look and adopting a more professional color scheme with purple and orange. The colors will be used in a new GNOME theme and boot splash for Ubuntu 10.04. According to updated design documents that were published in the Ubuntu wiki, 'light' is the underlying concept behind the new visual identity. It displaces the 'human' concept that has been part of Ubuntu's theming and brand vernacular for the past five years. Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has posted a screenshot and additional information."
Don't change all the time like Windows seems to do. Be yourself and we'll accept you. Rebranding almost never helps. Consistency does.
Is professionalism a virtue? I like the notion of Ubuntu as being warm and fuzzy, especially with the adjective+animal names for the releases.
Hey, how's it going?
Does anyone actually ever use the default Ubuntu theme? I know whenever I install Gnome the first thing I do is set it to clearlooks.
now im going to have to spend extra time getting the window tools to the right side of the window?
ugh this blows
cmon everyone knows the left side is the wrong one![/pun]
in other news they really should be using the technix theme. it could use some tweaking with the font colors, but other than that, its excellent imho
They changed the color scheme from brown to beige. How exciting.
The small icons are still too cluttered. They're simply smaller versions of the large icons, which never works very well.
First off... first post! Second, we ubuntu users have been able to customize our desktop through themes as long as gnome has been around. There are many ways to slap some eye-candy onto you GUI if you choose, but I for one am glad to see a new look. I think ubuntu needs to look fresh for the less techie out there. People are very visual weather they want to admit it or not.
Changing the look just to rebrand the OS seems silly, but Ubuntu has been in a desperate need for a new default color scheme for sometime. The screenshots look very beautiful, almost like a sunset with the dark UI almost like the nighttime slowly taking over.
Ubuntu is going corporate, and they're not shy about saying so, it seems. Sad. I'm not just talking about the colors. The old Ubuntu will be missed, but there will be others.
This is long overdue. The brown theme was a major turnoff for me. It seems silly, I know, but the first impression is an important one. This was at least part of the reason I preferred Kubuntu. The quick screenshot looks a lot better to me.
And yes, of course you can change the colors, but there's a lot of value of a nice out-of-the-box experience. Developing your own color scheme is trickier than you'd think to get "right."
I'm sad that the babysh*t brown color will go away!!!
Don't like that the Window control buttons (maximize, close, etc.) are moved to the top left of the window, instead of the top right where they used to be.
1. I'm used to them being on the right in both current Ubuntu and Windows. I know Mac has them on the left, but I never liked that.
2. If the window is partially dragged off-screen, I can click either the X on the right side, or File -> Close on the left side. With both being on one side, I need to or drag the window back (if it works, which often doesn't if its dragged so much to the extreme that it's hard to grab the title bar with your mouse).
I know the problem usually has trivial workarounds (such as a keyboard shortcut to close), but meh. Why not leave it the way it worked before.
Personally I don't care about the color change, or the names, or the branding.
It just has to work, consistently.
I don't mind getting into the guts to tweak things for myself.
My Mother, Father, and sister don't know how to use a CLI, and when I've tried to show them, have made it abundantly clear that they don't WANT to know how to use the CLI.
They don't mind ubuntu, as long as I make give them buttons that do what they want to do.
Honestly, Clearlooks is the best Gnome theme I have seen and I have used it for years now.
I don't see why a theme should be such a big deal in an OS where you can change it so easily.
Because brown seems so frivolous compared to a pair of secondary colours, and the other combinations were already taken by Barney, the Irish rebels, and these folks?
I suppose that's why industries that care about their professional image never use brown for anything.
--MarkusQ
I can't stand the off black boot screen. Makes me keep guessing if I am looking at black or not (its not).
Say it with me, boys. "Ubuntu: Jumping the shark has never looked so professional!"
Does anyone else think it looks more like mac os X?
"Purple and orange" is a professional color scheme?
I don't even know what color tie goes with a blue shirt, but even I know that's awful.
Looks like the server's starting to buckle under the Slashdot Effect!
Here is the CORAL link to the page with screenshots:
http://www.jonobacon.org.nyud.net/2010/03/03/refreshing-the-ubuntu-brand/
Willie...
Window control buttons are on the wrong side, if I wanted a Mac I would get one. Stop changing crap, clearlooks human or just clearlooks would have been fine.
Professional? Maybe, if you went to Clemson. Is this the price for getting their official endorsement ("Clemson students are encouraged to use Ubuntu."?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I would be happier if things like mounting digital cameras worked consistently from one release to the next without scouring the web looking for the latest hoop to jump through. Yes I can find the answer and make it work but a lot of potential converts will give up and pop the Windows 7 install disk in.
True that.
"We changed the wallpaper!" OMG! NEWS!
Also everything about Ubuntu and the word brown, such as: ..."
"Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look"
always reminds me of Apples Zune ad, can't find it on YouTube but it's like they talk about all the colors options and then mentions "[pause] brown
Hurray for brown!
It'd be nice if that color scheme were accompanied by actual action toward a better Ubuntu. Go red and green. I'll be looking for a computer that works.
Maybe i'm the odd one but I actually liked the old theme xD. It's one of the few reasons I ever booted into Linux rather than XP. Found the soft brown, white/grey, and orange pretty...relaxing somehow.
After all, it's not all that hard to get new themes for GTK or anything, but still, Purple and Orange?
Two things are clear:
1. Heavy drug use is now too commonplace at Canonical.
2. The drugs they are currently using last long enough for them to make a press release and a couple of websites demonstrating the effects of said drugs.
The only question that remains is what are they smoking and where can I get some?
Ubuntu gets a new theme and ./ STILL uses the Debian icon?
I wish they'd stay focused on usability and 'ergonomic' issues, and not waste time on colors and wallpapers and other bubblegum that half of the user base will be guaranteed not to like anyway. I'm not picking on Ubuntu; this criticism certainly applies to Windows and other OSs and Linux distros, too. Too much time wasted on fluff that doesn't matter much.
Because so many people were coming from XP, ubuntu always look like a step in the right direction. But with so many people on windows 7, Ubuntu now is a step behind. Also, does the new look feel like a dated MacOSX to anyone else?
As long as it's not blue and grey. God, I really *hate* desktops that are in shades of blue. It's cold and depressing. Not that the new orange and purple is much better. But at least, you can change it to anything you want.
I use a custom scheme that most of my friends find awful (of course *they* run some variant of Windows so the feeling is mutual). While I dislike the traditional Ubuntu brown and orange, I do like a brown palette. So, here's my preferred combination:
Base Theme: Clearlooks
Icons: ubuntu-sunrise
Wallpaper: Custom dark woodgrain
"Selected Items": medium brown (#752A2A), or for those who dislike brown, dark green (#005830) works
"Windows": medium tan (#D8C0A0)
"Input boxes": off white (#F0E0D0) to reduce eyestrain in terminals and text editors.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Anyone noticed that the bottom panel is missing? Is this on purpose for the screenies or will it be replaced by something else, not yet unveiled?
They've moved the window frame buttons to a place that's counter-intuitive for most people but they've also cocked that up in a way that doesn't even make sense for people used to OSX (the buttons are still laid out in the same order as if right-aligned). So now you've got buttons in places nobody is used to, the X button no longer benefits from the 'infinite-dimension' effect of being in a corner, and plus you've got the window frame buttons directly above the menubar - instantly making 10% of attempts to open the Edit menu into accidental window closes. I guess they never stopped to think why most WMs have them on the right and OSX has them on the left.
Brilliant.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Brown and orange at least look good together, like gold or wheat (they finally moved away from baby poop brown and used more orange in the last few releases). Purple and orange look like domestic violence.
You might wanna get that checked out.
The GNOME theme isn't ugly. It's the default wallpaper Ubuntu goes with it that makes it look hideous.
The 9.10 release has some nice BGs that go well with the Ubuntu GNOME colour scheme, but for some reason they chose a gradient brown one as the default.
The sceenshots in the article makes the new Ubuntu theme look like a non-trademark-infringing superficial copy of OSX. Those are the worst kind of themes for any linux distro, everyone just thinks "half baked crabby Apple Mac for tight-arsed losers"
What do i care.... the way GNOME 3 (and the entire GNOME community) is panning out, it's only a matter of time until KDE (rightfully) takes the reigns and we can wash our hands of the "worst of osx + windows with less functionality" monstrosity GNOME as become.
That reminds me. Some people just have a fixation on a color.
My mom is gonna paint her red car...
wait for it...
you guessed it...
red...
Not like her car needs a paint job. And shes not getting the same red color, apparently the red she wants is 2 more notches red than the current red. I didn't realize there was more than 1 kind of red, but hay, I'm a guy.
reminds me of the bash quote:
http://www.bash.org/?914350
<Rex> He's a guy, he only sees like 10 colours or something, don't do this to him.
Honestly though, it takes you what? a minute to change the style if you don't like it? I understand its Ubuntu, but skin change? Slow news day much?
O.o
I guess I'll have to stop calling Ubuntu "Chocolate Linux" now. Maybe Plum linux. In my best Gay Blade voice.
... an out of focus tit as seen from over head illuminated by a weak black-light bulb. The nipple is glinting orange for some reason. Perhaps a better background guys?
Purple and orange? Seriously? If you need color go with blue, and maybe green. Walk outside in the middle of the day and take a picture, more than likely the predominant color is going to be blue. People like colors for the same reasons they like music. Their ears get used to certain rhythmic sounds and their eyes get used to certain colors. The sky is blue almost everywhere in the world, even Africa. Microsoft and Apple figured this out a long time ago. Get with the program and quit trying to be different. Make your default theme blue and pick find some professional monochromatic photos of nature for your default wallpapers. Trees, grass, mountains and sky.
Moving the default placement of the window min/max/close buttons is a really annoying change.
First, 95% of the world uses Windows which will make any sort of transition that much harder for end-users.
Second, I like it the old way, dammit! (What? That's a valid argument...) I don't want to have to change the damn default window theme for every install of Ubuntu I use (and at this point that's three boxes - my main computer, my netbook and my media PC).
Grump, grump, grump. Get off my lawn.
-Russ
Me
Have they done any usability testing on this? The button locations in the screenshots shown are less than ideal to say the least.
First of all moving the buttons from the expected upper right corner to the left is going to go against most people's expectations, for both those familiar with Windows or previous Ubuntu Releases. Is there truly a reason for moving them to the left side or are they just trying to confuse users.
Even if there is some reason to move these buttons to the left hand side the ordering is poor. I would expect the most used buttons to be in the corners where they are easy to find without having to search through all the icons. Entirely to the opposite of my expectation they have placed the maximize/restore button in the far left corner. Do people really use this button more than the minimize or close buttons? I'd like to see a a program optionally deployed to current ubuntu users to gather statistics on which buttons are most heavily used if we are going to start ordering the buttons in some totally unique way.
Also the top panel is hugely cluttered.
Where is the bottom panel and task list?
If this is supposed to be the new Ubuntu experience, they really need to get back to the drawing board.
...and here's why:
1: All issues that prevented this from happening are non issues now.
2: KDE is much faster now
3: KDE is easier to develop for
4: KDE is easier to use for those coming from the Windows environment
5: KDE is much more flexible
6: KDE apps are more pleasing to look at
The old Ubuntu color scheme is ugly as sin. Who thought that orange and brown would be a good choice?
See this is why I use Xubuntu, the default theme is nice. Also XFCE is better than Gnome, IMHO.
Why is it "orange and purple" are automatically considered more professional than "brown"? Is it because it's a warm, welcoming color, reminiscent of freshly plowed ground, ready to grow crops? Is it because "flashy" is considered more important than "it works"?
Or has Ubuntu been taken over by flippin' LSU Tiger fans, and the menu will start getting all kinds of fake french suffixes and spellings applied to it? The brown of Ubuntu's current default Gnome theme goes so *VERY* well with my Enlightenment 16 theme (ShinyMetal). We don't *ALL* have to fall into Microsoft's Fisher-Pricing of the user interface!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think most would agree that the brownish theme was more than a bad idea. It's always the first thing to go when I install a new Ubuntu distro. The new theme is a big improvement, but I think they could have done better. But it will make a better first impression. However, the great thing about the Linux user interface is, you can change it to look any way you want. If you are one of the few who liked the old brown theme, it should take you less than a minute to get it back. And if purple and orange isn't your cup of tea, go for Clearlooks or whatever you like. You can download all kinds of custom themes. Again, what you have in Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) is total control over the visual appearance of your UI. Mark Shuttleworth isn't deciding what theme you must use, but what theme you first see. It's a suggestion, not a mandate. After that, it's all up to you. That's the freedom of Linux.
"adopting a more professional color scheme with purple and orange."
wtf?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Shuttleworth or someone else with decisive control over the default theme is most likely colorblind. I find that colorblind people tend to chose odd muddy browns, greens, and yellows when coloring things on the computer. You can frequently spot them when they prepare Powerpoint presentations.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I don't mind a visual re-branding, but the angular logo contrasts heavily with the rounded edges of the UI. Seems like a poor aesthetic choice IMHO.
Cutting into Ubuntu's user base? The ugly parent not liking the hot looking kid?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Ubuntu has been available for half a dozen years. In all that time, the window buttons have not moved. That is good.
Moving the buttons should only be done if there is a really huge benefit that can only be derived from the change. In this case there is no benefit. It's not easier for Mac users; the buttons are in the wrong order. It's not easier for Windows users; the current button order and placement is exactly the same as Windows. It"s not more like the button order from nature, because there is no such thing. It's not a winner in usability tests; there have been none.
I use Ubuntu by choice and Windows often by necessity. Please, Ubuntu, don't make it harder to switch between the two.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I don't know about you, but I don't give a wet crap what the default theme looks like. Regardless of operating system, the defaults last just long enough for me to figure out how to change them to what I like. The only time I'm turned off by the defaults is when I can't change them. About the only graphics change in Ubuntu I'd care about is better support for a broader range of graphics cards.
Mind you, if the change makes Ubuntu appeal more to the kind of people who think desktop color schemes make a difference in how professional they are, great. I'm just not one of those people, and I rather suspect most self-selected Linux users aren't, either.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What I find stupid, is the moving of the window "action" buttons.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
... because, the alternative link is slashdotted, too!
still looks much better.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
Color theory says that orange and purple need green to make a balanced set (equidistant angular jumps between each component on the color wheel). I don't see any green in the screenshot and it grates on me.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I think that the new color scheme looks much better than any previous default. The brown schemes have always been so glaring; they were practically orange.
I use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, and never use any windows buttons enough to develop a preference.
I think Ubuntu Studio got it right a long time ago.
To that point: I think Ubuntu Studio got it right a long time ago.
probably need a few hundred more links..
I'm surprised by the amount of slashdotters complaining about the previous color scheme of Ubuntu.
Putting aside that it is actually easy to change theme, orange and brown seemed to me a very consistent choice of colors. It never bothered me, I can't see why it is so unpleasant.
I don't see people complaining about how blue is Windows, or how grey is OSX...
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
I really mean STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!
If you're going to copy the Mac, at least copy from the *classic* Mac system, which was better designed in this aspect: the close button was in the top left corner of the window, but the zoom and collapse buttons were in the top right corner.
Why? The button that performs the more consequential / less reversible / potentially annoying action (=closing a window) must be separated from the ones that perform less serious ones (=resizing or hiding its content).
Circumcision is child abuse.
Oh, wow, I didn't notice that the first time I went over the images.
Also, I saw this image, and I was briefly confused when I saw that oblique image of the screen. For a minute, I thought there was a picture of a Mac with this wallpaper for some reason.
I hope I don't boot up the liveCD to find a dock replacing the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Ubuntu (or I guess GNOME) should be creating its own look, not ripping off of Microsoft and Apple.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
That is how I have it on my Ubuntu Laptop, But I am using the Emerald Windows Decorator. I wanted clear borders to see the conky on my desktop and I have the main "action" buttons on the left and the stick, shade and window menu buttons on the right. I have been using clear borders since early 2006 before Vista.
What can be more professional then a coffee stain? i mean really. :)
Jack of all trades,master of none
"a more professional color scheme with purple and orange."
Very probably the only time in the history of the English language that that phrase has been used.
You can change the colors of your windows and your entire GUI in gnome, in fact those i know who run ubuntu have their interface completely customized.
Purple is more "professional" than Brown? Still looks dowdy to me.
I have to agree. It still looks like crap, only in purple now.
Ubuntu really needs some creative people.
'nuff said
I frequently wipe Windows and install Ubuntu for fellow computer-illiterate folks. I say "this way it cannot get trojans, and games you dont care for anyways".
The thing is to "sell" them the new operating system. If they do not like it for any reason, they will never agree to the switch again.
Often the only change needed to base install is loosing the default brown background: do not want to scare away new "customers" early on.
The brown background has to go, but the abomination they want to replace it with is unacceptable. Even posting a pretty background picture is not going to save the day.
Take a look at these two screenshots:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/82/Snow_Leopard_Desktop.png
http://static.arstechnica.com//ubnutu_light_2.jpg
'nuff said...
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Maybe with some spiffy ads:
"Hi my name is Bobby Jo, and Oohbantu 10.4 waz mine idea."
I think if anybody ever bothered to use the default GNOME theme, the one the upstream developers ship, they would appreciate much of an improvement every Ubuntu theme has been over the default.
That reminds me. Some people just have a fixation on a color. My mom is gonna paint her red car... wait for it... you guessed it... red...
Not like her car needs a paint job. And shes not getting the same red color, apparently the red she wants is 2 more notches red than the current red. I didn't realize there was more than 1 kind of red, but hay, I'm a guy.
What does being a guy have to do with not knowing that there are different kinds of red? Really it is very easy to move from #A00000 to #C00000.
Ubuntu dumps the brown
I'm an accomplished adult and yet I can only barely resist the urge to make a poo joke.
/* No Comment */
"Two more notches" of red would be from 0a0000 to 0c0000. a00000 to c00000 would be 32 notches, so apparently he's right about guys not knowing.
These open source designs always scream open source. They just lack the polish and careful thought that you get with Windows or OSX. Far too often the designer resorts to being different for the sake of being different. Having done interface design for years now there are a few things that come to mind off the top of my head I'd work on.
A few critiques:
Overall the design looks a bit dated. I'm not suggesting they should have done something obnoxious, but it feels like insufficient effort was put into this.
Icons are flat, like they tried going for a dimensional look but either lacked the talent or the inclination to go all the way.
Font selection is clumsy. The font itself is quite good, but it's a bit on the large size given the scale, but more importantly everything is crammed together.
Icons and buttons almost look randomly placed. Why is zoom sitting between some icons and view selection. Is view selection even so important that it needs to be featured prominently? The folder buttons are too pronounced in relation to everything else and there's insufficient visual separation between that and the places dropdown.
There's insufficiently visual separation between windows in the foreground and background, although honestly I think OSX has this problem too. It gets problematic trying to pick something out when multiple windows are open. There's no sense of prioritization to anything so everything blurs together at a glance.
Those windows are poorly balanced. Why is everything left aligned, leaving most of the title banner empty?
This really looks like the rough draft of a GUI. If you want to sell an OS to the average user you've really got to make it approachable. That means making it visually appealing and polished. This is one of those things that doesn't seem important when done right, but people always notice it when something is missing. Also important is giving real consideration to the user experience. These designs look to me like someone simply copied Windows and added in a bunch of elements from OSX. Certainly there's a sense of familiarity users have with Windows, but why not study both OSX and Windows and try to get a sense for what works and what doesn't then build your GUI around that? And based on some comments I've seen it seems elements of the design even break Fitt's laws.
Having used the previous version of Ubuntu I wouldn't really say this is an improvement at all.
I used the Ubuntu Netbook Remix GUI for a year when my netbook was my only system (netbooks have become as much a staple of college life as ramen noodles and malt liquor) and I loved it.
I could see Ubuntu gaining some market-share if that were their standard UI.
http://www.colourlovers.com/color/A00000/ http://www.colourlovers.com/color/C00000/ i see like no difference :/ Its still red, and i doubt out on the street, you would see a difference
O.o
Honestly though, it takes you what? a minute to change the style if you don't like it? I understand its Ubuntu, but skin change? Slow news day much?
It's not like I actually use Ubuntu in the first place, I've just always found it a pretty weird choice of UI style. Same goes for Suns earlier versions of Java Desktop System.
Or well, last part of that comment makes it seem like it was for the moderators and not me =P, but yeah, pretty much agree. It's not like it looks like a huge difference anyway from last I saw Ubuntu. It would be obvious what Linux dist it was =P
Anyway, colors are interesting, I think I've read that various cultures have different colors but kinda like how everyone seemed to have red and if it was blue or green. Red most likely because of blood and the dangers of it and such. And I think it was blue because it reminded me of people saying "blue nigger" if that's something which is even used in english. But yeah, just caught my attention for not using the words brown or black on that occasion. And I do hate it when people use names I'm not used to =P. Can't we all speak hex RGB values please!?!
There are actually things much more important for this Linux distribution than a new color scheme. The most prevalent thing would be a new soft porn wallpaper, like in the initial versions.
I don't know how it was before but putting the quit application gadget close to everything else is always a good way to screw things up.
Though Windows does that to (and kinda OS X, but it only closes the window, not the whole app.)
Also who the fuck was the moron at Apple who decided that using command-w was a good way to close windows and tabs? How often have I not wanted to close a tab in my browser but rather ending up killing it all (by pressing command-q or atleast nudging q)? And it's not like their browser ask you if you really want to quit, and earlier it didn't recovered the tabs from your last session so you where screwed.
Good one Apple. Let's keep that key combination for another 15 years!
Who cares about some ubuntu? I don't and you shouldn't either.
Be a man, use http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
"When Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth gave his memorable keynote at OSCON in 2008, he articulated a vision of building a Linux desktop with industry-leading design and unbeatable usability. He promised that Canonical would invest in a broad effort to make Linux beautiful."
Keynote? Does this imply this guy is promoting an operating system he still doesn't belive in?
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
Sort of like Michael Jackson?
If to get really serious, they should choose one side for the window control buttons and stick with it for eternity. This issue is NOT just to wink away with a "Cool, new theme! But I can change it anytime"-comment.
The big competitors to Ubuntu (besides other Linux distros), Windows and Mac OS, has learned this a long time ago. People knows how it looks like and exactly how to use it. I'm not saying this theme change is a bad thing (personally, I think the lighter one is actually beautiful), but for the average user, this should be seen as very major upgrade! Newbies will find it hard to see why the buttons are moved if they would change that again.
"Why did they change the computer? They said Ubuntu was free and easy to use, but they change my computer all the time! I want my other computer back! What was it called again, Windows something.."
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
What I find stupid, is the moving of the window "action" buttons.
Agreed, people are - since a long ago - used to have the buttons at the right side of the title bar.
I really would like some consistency. Changing things just for the sake of it is a bad idea.
Also, what's that thing with the high-contrast background picture? Is that because it's pretty in screenshots?
It's horrible to use in practice. It feels heavy and tiresome to the eyes. Also, icons and/or their names look bad in certain parts of the screen.
Move away from brownish colors, okay. Drop the "Linux for homo sapiens" motto, good.
But, please, keep the things you got right.
Having a dock is not "copying Apple" - one of the first things I do when setting up Ubuntu on one of my home systems is get rid of the bottom taskbar (looks tacky) and use AWN to have a dock down there. Not only is a dock nicer looking in general than the taskbar, but it has effects to make it look GOOD on top of just the icons being centered in the screen and not having any extra crap. Also, Ubuntu is the OS where you can have a cube (or other multi-sided shapes if you choose) desktop - you can't get that from Windows or OS X.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I don't see why so much effort is being put into the design when I, and most people I know, would probably use a customized theme anyway.
The time spent working on the default theme could probably be better spent working on more important things that users complain about, like working on hardware compatibility, improving security, increasing performance, and general bug squashing.
Instead of purple orange and professional, they should have branded it Yellow Black and Rectangular.
Really? I would imagine that people would be growing more cynical with each purchase which is glossily-advertised but proves disappointing in reality.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
It appears to be an edited rip of Aakash Soneri's Sone. (A comparison: Sone is teal, the new logo face is wine, where it overlaps is cobalt blue.) The changes appear to be as insubstantial as adding a slant to ascenders and shifting the baselines of some of the glyphs.
If Canonical modified Sone, didn't license it, and they start freely distributing it ("our global community will still maintain access to the resources needed to construct logos that use the branding" - so either the modified glyphs for the logo as svg, or the modified font itself), that's a dick move.
And if they did license it, then why is an open-source project licensing commercial fonts and calling it a reflection of the project?
Maybe it's a placeholder - who knows? Canonical doesn't say anything about the font's origin or license in the linked documentation, nor does Canonical's Jono Bacon in his nearly identical announcement.
But it is disappointing to see an open source project - whose community already made LGPL-licensed typefaces for their current logo - make and publicize such a half-assed effort, even in a preliminary stage, without any explanation on the decision.
When you say, as an organization based on community contribution:
And you follow that with a logo that's based on a commercial typeface, you're reneging on that intent in at least one of two ways:
Even if Sone was correctly licensed, and Canonical got permission to modify it for their logo and future redistribution, why not get it from the community?
And if it wasn't licensed correctly, then is Ubuntu following the lead of Arial and just ripping things off in a legal but unethical manner when they can't find what they want in a convenient license?
(And maybe it's a coincidence - a really bad coincidence that still should be fixed. Without any explanation, nobody can tell.)
you see no difference?
One shade (the second one) is slightly lighter, although I don't think that would be worth painting a car to get. As for TFA, it is still brown, they just changed the wallpaper. Big whoop. As for those that scream "You can change the themes!" well you can do that in Windows too, and what does everyone have? Defaults.
Ubuntu is supposed to be for noobs, and noobs..well they are noobs and don't know squat. And lets be honest folks, the brown is fugly. OSX has the nice metallic going on, Windows 7 has the whole see through silverish blue, Kubuntu has a nice rich blue, and Ubuntu is...well I don't know if one would label that a dirt brown or a shit brown, either way it ain't pretty.
First impressions count, and surely there is a single theme designer in Ubuntu land that can make a better integrated theme to use for default. How about a nice warm green? Nobody is using green that I'm aware of. Hell anything would be better than dirt brown.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I dont know many people that jkeep their distros default colors anyway. What worries me about the screen shot is the button relocation. Thats fine to make it an option but to default people into that when most are coming from an OS that has buttons on the right is just stupid. If mac users switching over want the buttons there they can put them there.
Great, now instead of looking like shit, it looks like vomit. Thanks, Canonical, you assholes. Can't you just get a nice Mac ripoff blue theme?
When you get away from Windows, you can not only choose the UI (bash, ksh, zsh, etc) or GUI, but also change it. Before Microsoft became such a problem, it was the norm for people to not just tweak but show off their customizations. I know that most people really piss and moan about tweaking the defaults, but it is possible. The knowledge is gone from the mainstream, but the functionality is still there.
Whether you use KDE, CDE, Xfce, or GNOME you can choose not just the theme (appearance) but also the behavior. That goes especially for the window manager. You can do more with the window manager than deciding to have jiggly jello effects or not. When you talk about the GUI on a Linux, Solaris or BSD distro you're usually conflating about three things : the desktop environment, the window manager, and the settings for those two. It's not even necessary to run a full desktop, you can get by quite handily with just a window manager. Check out Enlightenment, OpenBox, Scrotwm,
Of course the desktop environment and window manager will come with default settings but those can be changed. If an in-your-face example is needed for just how much these can be configure to meet your needs install plain vanilla FVWM and give it a try. Then after that, install FVWM-crystal theme. Night and day different is there.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
If it's purple and orange á la Digital Equipment Corporation 1970s PDP-11's, then where's the matching "outline" font and where's my front panel? Will it be available on DECtape?
Every time I upgrade, I see more options gone, more choices taken away, more things that were customizable getting fixed one way.
If the fear is "users will be confused", give them an "advanced" checkbox to hide these options, don't remove them!
You want to avoid "confusing"?
I right-click on Panel and see all customization options disabled.
Then I spend next 2 days looking first through config options, then through installable configurators, then through raw config files, then through a hundred different Internet fora, then through the sources of the package, to get them enabled. Now THIS is confusing!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Look people, I don't know what problems you have, but there are a few things I can say for sure:
- Since 1985 I've used many different operating systems and currently Ubuntu is top-of-the-line for end users, along with Mac OS X. The latter only working hassle-free with the hardware that was built for it (!) ... and coming with a bucket full of Apple DRM and multimedia lock-in.
- Canonical has gone out of it's way to raise the bar for everyday end-user Linux *and* they are giving it away for free. Until Ubuntu the only distro with zero-fuss hardware detection was Knoppix and that looked like shit right of the bat.
- Ubuntu is so good it managed to lead me to peace with Gnome - which I allways thought as notably lacking (i.e. breathtakingly shitty) compared with the non-x.0 releases of KDE. And I still do. Yet Ubuntu original delivers it so well I couldn't be bothered to switch to KDE - and I'm a guy who makes a living developing on Linux. That's how good Ubuntu is.
- If you don't like the brown/orange or new purple/brown/orange theme, then change it. It takes 10 seconds. And you've got like 10 well designed themes to chose from off the bat. Try that with Windows or OS X. And besides: I and many others are grateful for a consistant visual style that - for once - isn't just a generic variant of the blue OS X .0 rippoff we've been served for the past decade from every vendor on the planet.
- They've now perfected their style and changed the logo. What's the fuss about it? And aside from the fact that I was getting used to the rounded helvetica, the logo actually as gotten better. *AND* they give the reason for the changes right there in their blog! Dig it folks: They have payed professional(!!) designers who derived and improved the new Ubuntu theme for them. Show me another client level FOSS project that has this. Or, for that matter, even a professional distro that does it this well.
Bottom line:
All you ranters and whiners: Please shut the f*ck up and for f*ck sake, be gratefull for once. Thank you.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Only a Windows (or OS X?) user, or someone who uses Linux but still thinks in Windows logic, could make such a fuss around a color scheme.
Linux is not Windows. In Linux, you got a choice. And you usually use it.
While in Windows, you have to install a crack to get other color schemes, and they are very limited, under Linux you can freely choose from whatever you like. And so the style/theme/scheme that comes with the installer, is just a mere default setting, that you’re going to change anyway.
A list of things you can change in X Window environments:
So there really is no point in making a fuss about the default style. Nobody cares. Because nobody is nearly forced to use it. It’s changed with a click.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
All they've done is change a few of the Appearance->Theme->Color choices, and added a minimal mauve background.
This barely rates a press release, let alone an arstechnica regurgitation and a slashdot post. Oh, no pressrelease http://www.ubuntu.com/news/pressreleasearchive.
This very different new theme and the window button changes don't seem to serve any purpose other than to make new visual changes for a new release.
Ubuntu might do better if they kept a better measure of consistency in the look-and-feel and user interface between versions.
For example, the shut down and log out buttons were separated in 9.10 and there is no longer any good way to have a single button that can simply shut down, standby, hibernate, and log out. There was no real need to change this and not provide a way of doing what was possible before.
Also, the volume control was merged into the notification area (to improve usability no doubt). The problem with this for me is when I watch a fullscreen something on my primary monitor, I cannot simply place a volume control applet on the other and scroll up and down to change the volume like I could before without making the primary notification area sit on the second monitor.
Change for the sake of change just doesn't seem like the way to promote a good Operating System. There will always be detractors, but Ubuntu should aim to have the level of consistency it needs for people to identify it (over a period of time longer than 6 months) as a particular brand.
Additionally, I personally would hate to see the old human theme disappear over time because a newer Macintosh-like theme takes some artist's fancy. I think the old human theme really captured the essence of the term "Ubuntu" (and the icons looked easier to associate with the tasks and didn't take so much space).
Visually aggressive color schemes are fatiguing. Why doesn't anyone besides Apple get this?
Microsoft = Yellow Green Blue Red
Ubuntu = Purple Orange Brown
Or you can go direct to the actual Ubuntu Brand page and see the new screenshots as they were meant to be viewed, i.e. larger.
Forget "Light", when are you going to drop Magnum on us??
Bitching about themes, reminds me of those TV programmes where a presenter or two show a couple various houses in the hope that they will buy one.
They roll up to the house, walk into the living room and say "no, i don't like the paint, or that chair, that dog looked at me weird."
NEWS FLASH - CHANGE IT.
No one uses Ubuntu because it's brown. FACT.
It's the Mac way. Mac = pretty.
I'll be moving them back to the right hand side with Emerald. I prefer them there. First screenshot is the standard New Wave theme with the icons moved.
Nothing to see, move along.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
purple and orange?
They must be kidding.
I've been loudly clammoring for Canonical to ditch the brown for the better part of a decade. On the forums, on IRC, on /., on Reddit, on my blog, literally everywhere, I've been pleading and begging for Shuttleworth et al to pull their heads out of their asses and make something that just generally appeals to a whole lot of people.
Brown doesn't. It was hideous, and somewhat embarrassing, especially when I tried to convince some people who ONLY WANTED FIREFOX that Ubuntu was a superior OS:
"But why is it so UGLY?!?"
"Hold on.... click click click..... Is that better?"
and of course those clicks are always changing the hideous default theme.
That said, this new theme is nearly as bad. Great, getting rid of the brown for.... PURPLE?!?!
Purple and Orange look god damned atrocious. Why don't you just make a better OS, and copy the superior look of just about every other OS on the market.
Points for originality only count if you don't look like shit. This new design, STILL LOOKS LIKE SHIT.
Why not just take a cue from Linux Mint? They actually have a very decent and PLEASING default look that is even original and different compared to Win and OSX.
While you are fixing that, why not go ahead and install superior default apps by default?
VLC is much, much better than any other video player for Linux.
Thunderbird is much better than whatever that crap is you default to.
Deluge is better than Transmission.
Audacious is much better than Rhythmbox.
In fact, other than Open Office, most of the Ubuntu default apps are right crap.
It wouldn't be hard to make 2010 the year of Linux on the desktop. All the tools are here now.
Sadly, all the distros I've seen are still too bulky, too ugly, and have all the worst default apps. Ubuntu is definitely a good example of that.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
The new branding looks very, very good. Purists may complain that this has nothing to do with Linux or its popularity, but the truth of the matter is that branding matters. Very much.
The new website, CD cover design, store and goodies and the new smoother lighter themes are part of the things that will attract people to Ubuntu. I love the new design and think its much clearer and simpler and above all more consistent than either Windows 7, Microsoft's site (which is chaotic on a good day) and Mac OSX (and I say that typing this on a Mac Pro). People like shiny, and it will make a difference, even to corporate IT where the PHBs will be attracted to (or at least not put off by) the design, even if they know nothing about the technicalities of Linux.
Now, if only they could provide some input into better IDEs for developers, then I think it will be on a much better track.
I don't get why this is news. The people who care about how Ubuntu looks (like myself) already know how to customize the UI to make it look like anything. New users who aren't familiar with it probably don't give a shit as long as it works.
Seriously, though, if you hate the colors so much, www.gnome-look.org is your friend.
My usual routine:
1.) Install updates ...) ...)
2.) Add additional repositories
3.) Run stored custom list of additional applications through aptitude (startupmanager, putty, openssh, git, chromium, opera,
4.) Repeat "1.)" in case there are some weird dependencies (happened to me more than once)
5.) Visit gnome-look.org to give the new install its own personality
6.) Apply UI preferences (Compiz productivity options, terminal window colors,
Since most of that stuff can be scripted anyway the default theme is merely a placeholder until that procedure is done.
So why should I even worry about something I won't see again until I set up another machine?
Sorry, Canonical but if I wanted my system to look and/or behave like OSX I'd simply "hackintosh" it.
I prefer your distribution simply because I like how it's set up under the hood and because Google usually spits out helpful results if a problem with an application or driver has to be solved.
Please tell me I did not just read the phrase "purple and orange". Is someone over there completely colorblind? What will they come up with next, red and pink?
Gah.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
"Aubergine"
Usual routine once the LiveCD has finished:
1. Install updates ...) ...)
2. Add additional repositories
3. Run stored custom list of additional applications through aptitude (startupmanager, putty, openssh, git, chromium, opera,
4. Repeat "1." in case there are some weird dependencies (happened to me more than once)
5. Visit gnome-look.org to give the new install its own personality
6. Apply UI preferences (Compiz productivity options, terminal window colors,
Since most of that stuff can be scripted anyway the default theme is merely a placeholder until that procedure is done.
So why should I even worry about something I won't see again until I set up another machine?
Sorry, Canonical but if I wanted my system to look and behave like OSX I'd simply "hackintosh" it.
I prefer your distribution simply because I like how it's set up under the hood and because Google usually spits out helpful results if a problem with an application or driver has to be solved.
NSFW links above (n/t)
A shame, I liked the brownish look. It reminded me of the savanna of Africa, the origin of Ubuntu. I thought they should have gone even further with the African theme by making sound events by tom-tom drums, other African music, or perhaps even jungle sounds.
Oops, forgot to add the NSFW warning. However, the mentions of "prudish" and "body painting" should be adequate tip-offs.
I suspect the linked images are only mildly NSFW, even by prim North American standards. The calendar wallpapers are nudes, but not showing the naughty bits, while the girl with body paint is wearing pants as well as paints.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
My first impression is that, looks like OSX.
This is a
It screams "I am a pretentious prick". The old font was at least friendly looking. But at least the three hand goatse is still easy to identify.
The old brown colour-scheme was rather horrible, but puke green? That's soooo 1983.
Light grey is classy and functional if done right (not like the heavy-arsed Windows 95), add a few sprinkles of colour in the right places and it will make a greater affect than against a coloured background. Light grey don't collide with the icons and other stuff from whatever forreign (to the colour scheme) software the user choose to install. High contrast black and white is good if you like something more eyecatching (it looks a lot smother on modern hardware, then it did on the old Macs, but it gets old fast). Greys also work well with whatever weird screens the user happens to use. Spend time at making things look smooth and nonobstructive (identify hardware like screen and graphic cards, and provide a more optimal default configuration, just the right amount of font hinting and antialiasing is more important than any colour scheme to get a great user experience or first impression), instead of wasting time on fragile, horribly convoluted colour schemes.
I live my life in full colours: I let my eyes feast on every colour that surronds me, I paint, wear, eat, design and sometimes shit in bright and vivid colours. Thats why my computers desktop theme is allmost completely grey, it doesn't interfere with the things I do with the computer.
(so we'll never see again this useless color discussion)
Have a dozen color palettes pre-set. Lay down a handy desktop widget to switch from one to another with one click, no more.
There's some web sites with this css switch ability: one click instant change. And all the page have an new color theme.
Make the same for KDE and Gnome.
For initial color setings: make it random of time dependant: Sunrise color set in the morning, bright theme for noon, dim color theme for night, and various transitions.
A cube, not really, but on OSX I can have as many virtual desktops as I require (16 max).
Who needs a cube animation?
But still the user interfaces on Ubuntu will look like outdated crap
Ironic.
I opened all the links in the summary, gave them a cursory glance and spent the rest of the last hour reading bash.org...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
s/guy/straight guy/
Make more sense now?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Purple and orange go together sublimely, like crème brulée and gravel.
But I guess purple is metrosexual -- which is "inclusive" in its own way.
I have a feeling that you guess wrong, i can't imagine GNOME would pick up anything from this mess, they have clearlooks, tango and other visual styles, all of which are tasteful and professional, and they're working on the gnome shell, which takes care of any UI ripoff accusations http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Screenshots
Ubuntu's new clothes, by comparison look as though they've been put together in five minutes in a panic. If this theme doesn't evolve rapidly into something slick, polished and original then they need to drop the re-theme until they've got time to put the work in and just use newwave, from a couple of ubuntus ago, as their default.
Adoption of Ubuntu is increasing inside of my motorcycle club, who's colors are purple and orange. In fact I'm heading out tonight to get two of our members set up on their new System76 desktop.
And you'd be right. Windows XP is Fisher-Price, not Playskool. Playskool makes Weebles, which wobble but don't fall down. Fisher-Price makes Little People; they make better finger-puppets, but if you push them they fall over. In a way, they're a lot like Windows.
I give it a resounding "Machs Nix." First thing I do anyway is set up the theme to my taste anyway.
Also who the fuck was the moron at Apple who decided that using command-w was a good way to close windows and tabs?
Like most key commands it's a mnemonic device.
N - new document (or window, windows are generally documents in Mac OS)
T - tab (open a new tab in the window)
W - window (close window)
Q - quit (quit application)
A - all (select all)
C - copy (copy selection to the clipboard)
X - cut (like a pair of scissors, also next to C for cut)
V - paste (like an insertion carat in editing, also next to C for cut)
And so on.
Yes, some of these keyboard shortcuts are close to other ones. If that bothers you then just change the shortcut to something else.
Sapere aude!
And it was an awful experience. I felt helpless. Windows were minimizing to some kind of carousel and than circling round randomly, and when I pointed to an window preview a full window would be restored, but when I moved the cursor to that window, it would minimize back to that carousel. I figured out, that you have to click the preview to actually restore the window , but this fantom "restoring" was very confusing.
IE tabs were converting to windows and than back to tabs, I hardly found tray which didn't look like tray at all and a hidden button at the edge of the panel was actually "Minimize All".
I had enough of these innovations, I want some control over my PC.
I really hope Canonical fixes this. It's just a plain old-fashioned fuckup. It doesn't look good, it doesn't help in any way, it just seems like a half-assed attempt to copy OSX's biggest interface design flaw.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...Ubuntu would fix what they broke in 8.1 and 9.xx. Skype hasn't worked since 8.04 and the new Grub is NOT an improvement. Lots of other minor stuff, but this is not the place to discuss it. I wish they would stop the every 6 months release and use that time make the next release work properly. The default color scheme is so far down on the list of needed improvements that it's only "value" is that it pisses me off that Canonical wasted resources on it. I've been using Linux for more than 10 years and Ubuntu since 6.04, but am seriously considering switching.
s/sense/cents/
Depends on the profession.
From TFS: Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look and adopting a more professional color scheme with purple and orange.
I agree with you - the colors don't matter, the OS does. But gees, purple and orange is professional? WTF? Garish and clashing is professional these days? Subdued, neutral colors like white, black, gray, or brown; or cool colors like various shades of blue or even green are professional looking (as in "a lawyer or doctor's office").
I must be getting old, the whole damned world is starting to look like Romper Room. I bought a netbook yesterday that has Windows 7 on it, and it has an even more kintergarden look than XP did. Is everybody hiring designers out of fourth grade these days? I guess grade school kids work cheap.
Ubuntu nor any other Linux distro should try to emulate Microsoft. If I want Microsoft on my computer I'll just leave it there; Windows comes on damned near every computer sold. You can't overtake a competetitor by cloning him, you have to be distinct.
Free Martian Whores!
The cube animation is useful for the fish that swim around in the cube.
But yeah, even I eventually got bored of that and turned it off.
I could care less about the default color scheme for Ubuntu. I spend 99% of my time looking at a maximized application window, so the only part of the theme I stare at much is the window's title bar anyway. Besides, if I didn't like the color theme I could just right-click on the desktop, and switch to some other theme with a single click. Ubuntu comes with more than a half-dozen themes out of the box.
However, what I DO care about are the window control buttons being converted from Windows-style (top right corner) to OS X-style (top left corner). I HAVEN'T seen any easy one-click config option for controlling THAT in Ubuntu. People can debate back-and-forth which which style is superior. Some say the Mac style is more ergonomic, because the mouse cursor spends more time on the left where the menus are. I say that Windows style is superior, because I'm less likely to close the window by accident every time I go for the "Edit" menu (grr!). However, all that debate would miss a key point... which is that OS X users are the wrong target audience to woo.
Basically, I see all downside and zero upside in tampering with the window control buttons to be more Mac-ish. This really is a much bigger change than just the color scheme, and I'm a bit puzzled why it's mostly flying below the radar while everyone argues purple vs. brown.
But there are folks who don't know how or who see crappy screenshots in tutorials on how to install and use and are immediately turned off. Yes, part of the reason we've never had "the year of the Linux desktop" is due to ugly and Ubuntu has it in spades. So I hope they change stuff, in fact they might even want an applet that lets people choose from a couple supported themes to come up right away after install.
You only need to click once. The stacked windows appear on hover-over. Thus, it is an improvement over WinXP.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
..change. What's important is that they're moving forward and not afraid at touching sacred cows so to speak. While I've come to equate brown with Ubuntu (got a few hoodies that are brown), I think I can handle the change. I've never really bothered to change the default theme because, it's just not that important to me. At any rate, Windows 7 has a very welcomed - and fresh - look and looking back is greatly improved upon from XP, while Mac OS X 10.6 still has that space vagina splash screen from Leopard... Move on Ubuntu, move forward!
www.itjerk.com
"more professional color scheme with purple and orange"
What like the Joker?
Those are the words of Mark Shuttleworth. He said that while giving the keynote at PyCon this year. He says that "good enough" is no longer good enough. I think what he's getting at is open-source needs to start sweating the details. It needs to learn from Apple. Solid software needs to look as good as it works.
Xubuntu = Ubuntu - Crap
I didn't realize there was more than 1 kind of red, but hay, I'm a guy.
I didn't realize there was more than 1 kind of hay, but hey, I'm a goat...
Leopard has been having its purplish pink background as default, I saw nobody complain about that. I think if some thing comes out of opensource folks at slashdot evaluate it too critically.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1552282&cid=31163196
But for all you who defended the "diaper-pail" color scheme (probably because you never had to change baby diapers), congratulations, Skippy, you've gone from ugly to
Someone should take their crayons away until they learn to color within the lines.
I for one am glad to see the end of the Poop Smear theme.
Lurchicus - For Sig, see other side.
..ah say, what profession, deems brown unprofessional and orange and aubergine professional? Are they serious?
Yes, clearly, the color scheme has been holding Ubuntu back... riiighhhtt. And if they're changing it, couldn't they choose a background that says something to me other than "dude, your monitor needs degaussing"... yeah, I'm on LCDs too, but that background has to go.
-Dave Haynie
What does being a guy have to do with - - - red?
Being a guy has EVERYTHING to do with red - and green. I've lived with "being a guy" all my life. I've learned the statistics, quite well. One in four guys are at least a little bit color blind. I'm the one in hundreds who is very color blind. At least, I'm not the one in a million who is truly color BLIND - all they see are blacks, whites, and grays.
Women? They aren't color blind at all. One in a thousand might have a little difficulty with some shades that other women take for granted, but she won't even come close to what us guys life with.
Recent article, I think it was discussed here on slashdot, about women with unusual chromosomes shows that SOME women can see much further into the ultraviolet spectrum than people had ever thought possible. No guys, though. Color vision is sex linked.
So - relax if it looks like the women are making fun of us. We don't live in the same world they do, and never did. You can't even get there if you try.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Brown isn't fugly, it's a great color. The color of my hair, my guitar, and my Zune. The color of my coffee, the color of chocolate. The color of Halle Berry.
OSX in metallic... yeah, I didn't get enough of that in Linux in the early 1990s. Looks horribly dated. Windows 7 is something of an improvement over XP, mainly because they removed the annoying and distracting candy-coloring or everything, and used "translucent" to make the theme virtually neutral.. change your background, and you're good to go. Same reason most professional media content software uses neutral greys for much of the interface: let's not distract one away from the actual use of the system.
Brown worked in this pretty well, too. Purple, not so much.
-Dave Haynie
I hope I don't boot up the liveCD to find a dock replacing the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Ubuntu (or I guess GNOME) should be creating its own look, not ripping off of Microsoft and Apple.
When I first looked at the screenshot in TFA I thought they were going to do an OS X comparison and was wondering where the dock was... talk about surprise.
Oh, and then I looked at the comments on that page... holy piss some of those folks are getting really upset about the theme change. It's like any movement toward a more streamlined and user friendly interface just presses their "Indignant Button." Of course, these are probably the same folks who have decried Linux's movement away from hardcore users over the past decade...
It just occurred to me that this post will probably be flagged as Flamebait... huh...
I'm still not posting anonymously dammit!
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
The windows-snapping-on-edge is an event which is configurable in lots of desktop management. (I remember vaguely using it to "dock" my LICQ window on the right under KDE1).
Indeed, it's mostly disabled in current windows managers, although, by default compiz in most distributions has it configured to move windows across faces of the "Cube" (which I personally find a much more sensible behaviour for an edge as windows' "tile")
Nonetheless, tiling-assisting features are still present and available since eons in most desktops :
- Right-click (on the horizontal end of a button row) on the maximize button makes a window full width, but vertically resiable/movable.
- Middle-click (on the wheel which is vertically oriented) on the maximize button makes the window full height, but horizonaly resiable/movable.
This helps in tiling windows.
It's much superior to windows' solution because :
- It doesn't break the "restore window" function. It's like the usual restoring/maximizing function, only with two separate axis. (Whereas, once a Seven's window is docked, hitting "Maximize" will make it full screen, not restore its position)
- It feel much more natural than Seven's behaviour (instinct tell us that when I move something aside, I want it out of the way)
- It's overall much simpler than older Windows' behavious (minimize the other windows, then right click on status bar, then "Tile windows vertically/horizontally")
- It's fucking useful with modern 16:10 ultra big screens (you seldom need full width applications. Better to vertically maximize several windows and organise them side by side on your giant screen. Usefull when coding and other tasks where you have mainly vertically-oriented tasks).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I have suffered similar frustrations to tux0r, most recently in trying to tweak the parameters of my xorg.conf so I could make my CRT look nicer (timings and such make a huge difference as to whether something like 1400x1050 looks good or like crap on a 17" monitor). So, xorg.conf exists, but it's barebones -- so unlike every "hard-to-use" Linux distribution I've used previously, I have to go through the extra step of generating the xorg.conf file and then editing it. How hard would it be for Ubuntu to auto-detect the hardware and then SAVE that config where it's actually tweakable?
I get the sudo thing, but there is still software out there that assumes the root account exists and has a password (I forget what it was but just recently I was installing something that made that asumption).
And finally, tux0r's point wasn't that it took hours and hours to find out about generating xorg.conf. It was that it took hours and hours to find the answers to many problems that he should not have had to deal with.
Ubuntu is very good at getting you to "good enough to use", but very bad (and getting worse) at allowing you to go past that to "works as well as it possibly can". Some of this is probably GNOME's fault, but the Ubuntu devs often seem to be of the same mindset as the GNOME team, which may be why the Kubuntu folks are starting to chafe -- I've tried Kubuntu more than once (most recently after the gdm "the old themer is dead, the new themer is yet to come" fiasco) and it does often seem to be an afterthought to Canonical.
-- Old Man Kensey
they are shaped by the needs values of the 99.9% of users who are not geeks.
And what does these users needs ?
Something which displays windows on screen, and can occasionally maximize them if needed.
That's a task which is possible in Windows from the old pre-Luna style to all the way up to Seven, Mac OS X (although the maximizing is slightly less user friendly), KDE, Gnome, XFCE, or countless of other desktop environment.
In fact, you have to look among rather rare and esoteric window managers to see something which DOESN'T work that way.
99% of the desktop is owned by Windows, simply because people stick to what they know (and don't want to sell a kidney on the organ black market in order to pay for a shiny Mac).
What 99.9% of users want is already provided by almost every software under the sun. That's why we talk about features that only .1% use : that's the only thing that sets apart vastly superior environment from crappy ones.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...but did they have to pick the worst possible shades of purple for the wallpaper? It's not a "light" pastel wallpaper, it's not a bright, energetic wallpaper or a deeply-, richly-colored wallpaper. It'a wallpaper that looks like it's sat in a corner fading in the sun for a year or two, at least on my screen.
One of the things I like about Windows 7/Vista is the more aesthetically-pleasing colors in the default theme compared to XP. Hell, half the reason I first installed compiz + emerald years ago was because the themes I saw in screenshots looked bright and inviting as opposed to the themes included with Ubuntu. (OK, and because the desktop cube and wobbly windows are AWESOME SQUARED.)
-- Old Man Kensey
You guitar is brown? Man, that is just sad dude. I got see through Cherry on my swamp ash 5 string, slick black on my 20 year old American JP-90, and I'm currently talking to the guys at Washburn trying to date my white one, which I went "artistic" on with dice knobs, 40s pinup girls, and custom painted sparkle finish on the pickguard and headstock. Now THAT is style!
As for "Ubuntu brown"? Its fugly dude, it ain't like I'm the first guy to say so. Why do you think so many scream 'You can change it!"? Its because they know it is fugly too. And it isn't a chocolate or a rich walnut, its just...I'm leaning for dirt brown, as it makes me think my monitor is dirty when I look at it. Its dingy and just has no style.
Besides I thought Ubuntu was "for humans" and all that jazz? Power to the people and all that rot? So why not end this already, by having a vote? Have a simple theme set up with each major color-white, black, blue, green, yellow, and red, along with the brown and a couple of buttons for choosing whether you would prefer straight, metallic, of glass, and let the people decide?
I'll tell you why. It is because the Ubuntu developers refuse to admit their choice sucks and know that any vote would show that everyone hates the dirt brown color, that's why. If I were walking down a laptop aisle and knew nothing about OSes I wouldn't give Ubuntu a second glance. It doesn't catch the eye, it isn't exciting, it is just...well dirt brown. And dirt brown just don't sell compared to the pretty silver metallic of OSX and the slick see through blue of Windows 7. Sorry.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Just add some startup music from Mozart and you will truly drive everyone away.
You sound like someone who's been dragged along on a shoe shopping expedition.
You'd think that black is black. You can't get more neutral than black, right? Well, apart from white. And maybe grey. Whatever. Be sure that if she buys a black bag, it's a different shade of black and it clashes horridly with all the black shoes she already has.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's a huge improvement, but still it looks like classic mac with an upgrade, it's miles off of Windows 7 which is a shame. I wouldn't have minded putting it on one of my laptops.
... looks unprofessional.
Is that the same world where they wait in line and must surely know how much whatever they are purchasing is worth but holds up civilization to dig out the $5 and 85 cents out of their wallets?
mods on crack again...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
1) Orange+Purple is NOT professional.
2) It is a rip off of Snow Leopard.
3) It's still orange and gray, it's basically the new wave theme with a purple background and glaring WM buttons.
4) The WM buttons are not where Windows users are used to.
5) The WM buttons are not where OS X users are used to.
6) The WM buttons are not where Linux users are used to.
7) The WM buttons are not conforming to any usability or logic principle, in fact they just placed them exactly right to cause problems with the top panel menu.
8) Rebranding will not suddenly make the main issue with users way (OS inertia) but will help make ubuntu visually undistinctive.
9) It will alienate their surest target demographic, their current users.
10) They are doing it wrong anyway.
Feel free to expand the list.
But... the future refused to change.
I don't LOOK at my operating system so much as I USE my operating system. Does anyone really care about how sexy your O.S is? I just want to get the task at hand done and Ubuntu works great for me. Now if this helps them some how gain market share then bonus for me, it will likely lead to more improvements. Though I did chuckle at orange and purple being professional, maybe they took a bid tip from these guys: http://www.unisys.com/unisys/
...but what about fixing that f.. networkmanager instead? It's still broken in many ways.
What the hell? They changed the *colors*? I'm not stupid, I've installed an OS, I can very well change the color myself thank you very much. Now how about you change the antisocial icons with freakin fields of space around them? How about getting a cardio plan for those fat-ass clunky menus? Making a mouse settings dialog which allows a sensitivity other than "insane hyperactive cat on speed after drinking a liter of coffee at 4 am in a string factory"? What about default fonts which don't look like ass? What about a desktop which doesn't belong in a Rube Goldberg book (that's you KDE)?
Sure, I can change those too. Unfortunately it's a huge hassle. What turns people off about the interface is not the default- the XP default is hellishly bad. Thing is, going to no-nonsense theme in XP literally takes you 6 clicks, start, settings, control panel, themes, windows classic, ok. Ubuntu? Programs, internet, firefox, google.com, enter, "changing font on ubuntu linux", click some results, read, google.com, "ubuntu kerning fonts enable", click some results, programs, internet, xchat, freenode, #ubuntu, "hi, how can I fix my ugly fonts?", programs, system, terminal... With some clever montaging away of the "boring" parts, you could easily have an epic 3 hour search story.
to talk about how many meetings we will have to decide on when the meeting will be to decide what color purple we would maybe like to use ... if that's ofcourse a politically correct and religiously neutral colour ...
the peoples front of judea ?
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
Oh, wow, I didn't notice that the first time I went over the images.
That's the point, it's mostly little details. It's not revolution (KDE 4), it's evolution.
Did you notice the new logo font? I'm in love, does anybody know what it's called (or where to get it)?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Bikeshedding. Google it.
Ubuntu brown was earthy and calm. A very good, neutral color that still allowed it to stand out from the grey OSes.
The new look maintains that visual identity while adding a bit more light and life to it.
Nothing more, nothing less. And that is exactly what such a refresh need to do.
Try using it. It is much better if your UI elements fade into the background while you are trying to concentrate on your actual work.
Apple dock is a pretty lousy concept - it takes much more vertical screen space than even two full Gnome panels (that do much more than a dock). And vertical screen space is a very precious commodity.
The Two Gnome panels is a much neater concept - if you want to start an application, you look up, if you want to switch to an application that you already launched, you look down. Very simple to remember and very logical.
i know what bikeshedding is, it still don't change the fact you are trying to sell a product, and that is what Ubuntu is, no different than OSX and Win 7. And anyone with marketing experience will tell you that first impressions count.
And while what you say would be completely accurate if Ubuntu came out in 1998, it is 2010 dude. There ain't no Grey OSes anymore, haven't been for nearly a decade. Hell you want to talk about bikeshedding, how about how Ubuntu and the other Linux devs wanking off on whther something is free or non free, meanwhile without a stable ABI and drivers on CDs ANY Linux is a royal fucking bitch from hell to shop for at retail? You want proof? Take a pen and paper and go to your local Walmart. write down the makes/models of devices there, and look them up. First it will take you all damned day just to figure out what works and what don't, then you'll find you are looking at maybe 1 in 5 devices being sold there having "support" if you count support as 3 pages worth of CLI gibberish you are supposed to "tweak " (the average noob is unqualified to do so BTW) to get to working on your particular hardware/software rev.
So ultimately I think you're right,color doesn't matter, and Linux is just a waste of time. Everyone in Linux development is gonna wank off over Vi VS Emacs style arguments while Windows 7 and OSX stomp the living shit out of Linux on the desktop. NO focus groups, NO designing for the users, NO drivers on CDs, instead expecting every Windows user to do it "your" way, which will never ever happen. As a retailer after dealing with the nightmare that is Linux support on consumer grade hardware frankly you couldn't pay me to offer your product.
I would say that the shit brown color is just a symptom of a larger disease, the arrogance of Linux devs and the refusal to face reality and design a product that retailers will actually carry on their shelves. It is kinda sad really, as I had hopes in the late 90s/early 00s that Linux would open up some real competition. Now here we are a decade later and Linux on the desktop is still so low as to be below the margin for error. Just damned sad.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
fixes the colors, but puts the window controls in the wrong side. /. i hate the preview | options | cancel on the left side... :(
can you move the controls?
i mean on